1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to software, and more particularly to a system and method for managing partner organizations.
2. Background Information
It is critical for an organization that relies on partner organizations to ensure that its partners have capabilities in place to consistently meet the organization's objectives. Examples of organizations that rely on many partners include:                Product manufacturers with large supply chains that provide raw materials, components and outsourced production services;        Businesses that rely on other organizations substantially for sales and distribution services;        Government organizations that rely on a network of external partners that deliver related products and services to address constituent needs        An association that is tasked with helping its member organizations to improve their capabilities in certain domains (e.g. quality, environment) and to help members communicate selected capability facts to their customers. In this situation, the members are the partner organizations and the association is the organizing party.        
Large organizations often rely on many dozens, hundreds or thousands of partner organizations. Many of an organization's partners can expose the organization to significant risk of damage to brand value, stock value, customer satisfaction, revenue, and stock value. For example, partners can damage an organization through (1) violations of government regulations, laws or the organization's policies; (2) unplanned disruptions to products and services required for production, sales and distribution; and (3) deterioration in the quality or delivery of partner products or services.
First, partner violations of government regulations, laws or the organization's policies can cause an organization's own products to be in violation. For example, a manufacturer may include components from a supplier that has inadequate internal controls leading to:                Use of hazardous, toxic or regulated chemicals        Inaccurate country of origin labeling        Violations of labor laws        Violations of the organization's policies for labor, environment and social responsibility        
Second, unplanned disruptions to products and services required for production, sales and distribution can cause significant financial hardships and customer satisfaction issues for an organization. For example:                Manufacture of key products may be stopped if a key component is unavailable. Some such outages can be avoided with adequate planning capabilities. For instance, a supplier outage may be caused by a disaster event striking suppliers who prepared poorly for such events. This can result in a large shortfall in revenue and profit for the organization.        Customer satisfaction may drop if an outsourced customer service call center provides poor or inconsistent support experiences for customers        A significant revenue and profit shortfall may occur if an outsourced sales call center is suddenly unavailable at the end of a quarter due to an Information Technology (IT) outage and poor planning for alternative procedures.        
Third, deterioration in the quality or delivery of partner products or services can cause quality problems in an organization's products and services. For example, a supplier may suffer quality problems for various reasons (e.g. inadequate internal controls of production processes; inadequate procedures to contain contamination by chemical spills). The resulting poor quality components may be integrated into organization products. As a result, the products may significantly under perform or contain dangerous chemicals.
The examples above showed how poorly managed partner capabilities pose significant risks to an organization. On the other end of the spectrum, strengthening partner capabilities can help an organization to compete better. For example:                A business whose partners have sound disaster planning in place when a regional disaster strikes, may be able to gain market share on competitors whose partners were more impacted by the same disaster event        An association that is effective in helping its member organizations to improve their capabilities in a domain demonstrates value and is more likely to retain and grow its members.        
Organizations with a large number of partners tend to be the most vulnerable to partner risks. The reason is that the more partners there are, the more potential negative events that can inflict damage to an organization's brand value, stock value, customer satisfaction and revenue. Therefore, organizations with many partners take great risk if they manage only their top partners. The capabilities of all partners must be managed since all partners are sources of risk. However, managing the capabilities of all partners is especially difficult for organizations with many dozens, hundreds or thousands of partners.
Organizations generally use one or more of the following approaches to ensure that partners have adequate capabilities:                Mass communication to all partners        Partner data gathering        Personal capability reviews with top partners only        
First, organizations use mass communications to inform partners about capability expectations. Mail, email and websites may be used to inform partners that they are expected to have certain capabilities in place, such as the ability to manage their risks and quality effectively and may offer templates, samples and instructions intended to help partners understand the capability objectives. The advantage of mass communication is that it is inexpensive. However, mass communication:                Is ineffective at producing mass improvements. Mass communication only informs the partners. Few improvements are likely without follow-up.        Leaves the organization unaware of risks and partner capabilities since it does not gather data.        
Second, organizations may gather data from partner organizations. For example, in one embodiment, an organization uses electronic surveys to get data about current partner capabilities. The main advantage of electronic surveys is that they are inexpensive and configurable. On the other hand, such surveys do not provide a system for managing partner capabilities to achieve capability objectives. They simply help to gather data about current capabilities.
Third, organizations perform personal capability reviews focused on top partners only after gathering data from the top partners. The advantage of personal capability reviews is that they allow an organization to identify and communicate gaps to top partners. The disadvantages are:                Manually intensive review. They are manually intensive and therefore organizations do not have the resources to apply detailed reviews to more than the top partners (e.g. the top 10-50 suppliers in the supply chain or the top channel sales partners).        Manually intensive follow-up. Effective follow-up requires up-to-date records on supplier gap status, supplier contact persons and supplier type. This makes effective follow-up ill-suited to a manual process.        Lack of visibility across partners. For example, to answer a question like which partners have a particular gap, an organization would need to open all the files that all the partners sent. Partners often provide multiple files in response to capability surveys. As a result, an organization with dozens of top partners ends up with hundreds of separate files (or paper documents). This makes it impractical to answer questions across partners.        
In sum, a key limitation of using personal capability review to manage partner capabilities is that it is resource intensive. Therefore, an organization with many partners can apply it to top partners only. This means that the vast majority of the partners are still capable of inflicting great damage on an organization by acting outside expected constraints (e.g., by breaking laws on hazardous materials or child labor).
What is needed is system and method that addresses these deficiencies for managing capabilities across many partner organizations.